


Little Dolls

by theskywasblue



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-17
Updated: 2012-09-17
Packaged: 2017-11-14 11:57:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Special Agent Gojyo Sha is on the trail of a serial killer - but so is Hakkai Cho, brother of one of the killer's victims.  Who's going to catch the killer first is anyone's guess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Little Dolls

**Author's Note:**

> so basically, the subtitle to this entire fic is "What the f*** am I doing with my life?" I wrote what amounts to 14,000 words of gen-fic because I couldn't find a proper place for any smut, and if you don't want to read it, I totally won't blame you. If you do read it, though, I hope you enjoy it?

It was raining when the plane touched down – the city obscured in a dark haze of clouds, water hitting the tarmac so hard that the droplets bounced skyward again in defiance of gravity.

Gojyo stood just outside the doors of terminal three – domestic arrivals – with his small suitcase resting against his leg, smoking a cigarette and watching the rain sluice through the gutters, feeling cold and antsy in his travel-rumpled suit, with the tap of his Browning against his ribs every time he shifted his weight reminding him why he was there; as if he could have mistaken the stack of typed files and glossy crimson-splashed pictures that had shown up on his desk eleven hours ago as anything like an invitation to a pleasure-cruise.

He couldn’t even see the city beyond the ramps and terminals of the airport. A family – Mom, Dad, three little girls in pink galoshes – raced across the road towards to the bus stop for the hotel shuttles. A 747 swooped in low, making the air vibrate, making Gojyo’s ear’s ring.

He was halfway through the cigarette when a squad car pulled into the loading zone, spilling out a kid in uniform who looked barely old enough to be out of the academy. He bounded across the sidewalk towards Gojyo with a hand held up over his head like it had any chance of stopping the deluge from soaking his untidy mop of chocolate brown hair.

“Special Agent Sha?” He shouted over the echo of the rain and a low-flying jet, drawing stares and whispers, “Officer Son – I’m your ride.”

Gojyo shook the kid’s slippery hand, and then let him grab his bag and toss it into the back seat of the patrol car, while Gojyo ducked into the passenger’s seat, shaking water from his close-cropped red hair and wiping it from his face. Now, on top of being itchy, his suit was wet and uncomfortably heavy. Condensation fogged the patrol car windows, and Officer Son cranked the heat before he did anything else, stale air blasting Gojyo in the face as the car pulled out the loading zone.

“Smells like wet dog,” he muttered, rubbing his nose.

“Sorry,” Officer Son’s eyes darted sideways, colour rising in his baby-round cheeks, “This is Mason’s car usually – he’s with the K9 unit.”

Son navigated them out of the maze of the airport roadways and out onto the freeway, where the grey haze of rain was cut by the yellow glow of high-beams and the roadside was obscured by the rain filling up the ditches and washing the paint off the asphalt.

“So what hotel did they put ya up in?”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather just go straight to the station. Can I smoke in here?”

Son made a face like he really wanted to say no, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. “Yeah, I guess so.”

Gojyo lit cranked down the window about half an inch, spattering his face with rain, and lit up a cigarette, doing his best to blow the smoke outside the car. With the still much- needed nicotine fix pressed tight between his lips, he fumbled around his pockets until he located his notepad. The rain had softened the pages, blurred some of the ink, but his slap-dash handwriting was still mostly legible.

“I’m supposed to be meeting with someone named ‘Sanzo’ – dunno if that’s his first name, last name...is that Officer Sanzo? Detective Sanzo?”

Son laughed, “It’s pretty much just Sanzo. You’ll know when ya meet him for sure.”

There was a long silence as Son swung the patrol car off the freeway and onto the city streets, cruising through a rain-sopped neighbourhood of tiny, weather-beaten houses with muddy yards and sagging porches, windows covered with towels or tinfoil. They pulled up to a stop sign and Gojyo watched a mangy looking dog with a pair of matching puppies digging through an over-turned garbage can.

"So, you're going to catch this guy, right?" Son broke the silence so abruptly that Gojyo flinched, his thoughts tugged sharply back from where they had wandered, with the sad dog and her two pups.

“Yeah, kid. That’s the plan.”

“Goku,” Son responded, sticking a hand awkwardly across the space between them for Gojyo to shake. “You can call me Goku.”

“Gojyo,” he muttered. Goku’s fingers were colder than his own.

“I hope you can do it Gojyo,” Goku said, his boyish face going dark around his gold-flecked brown eyes. Gojyo knew from experience that there were only a handful of things in the world that could make a young man’s face turn like that. Goku had seen something, something vicious and full of blood, and nothing was ever going to wash that away.

“Somebody needs to stop him. Soon.”

***

The bullpen was familiar chaos – phones ringing, voices rising to be heard over one another, radios broadcasting in flares of static – all marinated in the smells of cologne, poorly-washed clothes, cigarettes, coffee and a half-dozen different kinds of takeout.

Gojyo felt eyes on him the moment he walked through the door – some just curious, some challenging, some outright hostile. It was nothing he wasn’t used to. Every time he was called out on a case he was mostly inadvertently, though occasionally on purpose and with a great deal of joy, stepping on someone else’s toes; as an agent of the federal government, it was practically a job requirement.

Gojyo did his best to make himself look presentable – straightened his soggy suit jacket, tightened his tie – and followed Goku’s direction towards the back of the bullpen and the rows of glass-windowed offices, raising a hand to knock on one of the doors. There was no monogram, Gojyo noticed – whatever had been there was scraped off, with only a trace of black paint remaining.

“Hey Sanzo – the FBI guy is here.”

A shadow moved on the other side of the yellowed blinds and the door opened. Sanzo was younger than Gojyo had expected – lanky, and vicious-looking, but not terribly tall, with a mop of blonde hair. He looked like he had been sleeping in his clothes for at least a few days, and the smell of cigarettes around him was powerful, even by Gojyo's admittedly high standards.

He gave Gojyo the full eye-rake – a once over like he was some kind of southern debutant – before grunting, "Whatever," and stepping aside to let Gojyo duck into the office.

Gojyo had been inside a lot of command centers -- from the ones in small-town sheriff’s offices that barely had an internet connection, to places in New York and Hawai’i that made the Bat cave look like a kid’s fort made out of a refrigerator box – but the inside of Sanzo’s office was something else entirely. It was close, warm and smoky, poorly-lit. The entire back wall was a white board, tacked with photographs and scribbled with notes in a dozen different colours of dry erase markers; pictures of the victims, alive and smiling; pictures of the crime scenes, with the victims’ bloodless bodies posed and polished; a city map tacked with pins; photos and reports of the autopsies; dates and times, places, faces crossed out over and over again.

“This is...impressive.”

Sanzo snorted, pulling a pack of Malboro Reds from his pocket and smacking it on his open palm – a motion all too familiar to Gojyo. He had tired like hell to quit smoking just before his last case. It had never happened; not with all those kids...

“What did you think, that I’m just sitting here with my thumb up my ass, and that’s why I can’t catch this guy?” Sanzo slipped a cigarette between his lips and turned to the window, tugging the blinds apart. “Tch – that kid. Standing out there like a lonely puppy.”

He stepped back, lit the cigarette. Gojyo’s fingers itched, so he grabbed one of his own, slightly damp from his exposure to the rain.

“You can’t smoke those in here,” Sanzo grunted, walking over the desk and clearing a spot amongst piles of papers to park his bony ass.

“Why the hell not?” Gojyo shot back. He already had Sanzo pegged, as much as he needed to, anyway. King Shit of Turd Island; if he was going to push, Gojyo was going to have a lot of fun pushing back. He lit his cigarette and took a deep drag, blowing the smoke up towards the ceiling. “And, for the record, I don’t think you’re incompetent. I’ve got all your case files, I know you’re more or less fucking obsessed with this guy – what are they calling him – The Doll-maker?”

Sanzo made a face like he had just stepped in a pile of rancid fish guts, “That’s what _the press_ calls him – and they’re all a bunch of idiots and assholes. And you can’t smoke those in here because Hi-Lites are shit and I don’t want to have to smell them.”

“Yeah, well – federal jurisdiction. Or whatever.” Gojyo made no move to put the cigarette out; instead, he started scanning the board against the wall. There wasn’t much he hadn’t seen before – though the pictures seemed bigger, more terrible, tacked up on the board with names, dates and times scrawled underneath. He could feel Sanzo’s eyes burning angry holes in the back of his neck as he compared the victim photographs – he tried to look only at the ones where the girls were alive – and the pins on the map, matching them up. They were colour-coded and numbered: Red for homes, blue for places of employment, black for the last places they were seen alive, yellow for the crime scenes, each numbered one through three.

Gojyo grudgingly admitted to himself that Sanzo was nothing if not thorough.

“So there’s really no connection,” Gojyo said at last. He tried to pick a pattern out of the assemblage of pins – he was good with patterns and predictability, it made him a stupidly good card player – but he might as well have stood across the room and thrown a handful of darts.

“Not that we’ve found,” Sanzo confirmed with a huff of obvious annoyance. “Victims one and three attended the same college – but six years apart. We thought that might be something, but it’s just a coincidence. It’s not like there’s a lot of choice, if you want to stay local and go to school.”

Gojyo took a final, long look at the three smiling faces of The Doll-maker's victims, trying to sear the memory of their happiness into his brain. Until the case was closed, this would be the last time he saw them really _alive_ \-- the last time he would be clearly able to picture them as people instead of bodies.

Then he took a deep drag of his cigarette and turned to Sanzo.

"Okay, I want you to tell me everything you know."

***

The Empire Hotel looked like it should have fallen when Rome did. The building was white-painted cinderblock with blue trim, sandwiched between a convenience store and a Halal butcher. The carpet in Gojyo's room was faintly tacky underfoot and everything was permeated with the smell of raw meat.

He'd been hoping for at least a dry cleaning service to salvage his more than slightly mangled suit – one day, he would think ahead enough to remember he needed to pack more than one – but apparently the federal dime wasn't going as far as it used to.

Then again, who was he kidding? It had never gone very far. At least The Empire was marginally better than that time in New Mexico when the town had been too small to have a motel at all and he'd ended up sleeping three weeks on the local sheriff's lumpy, fold-out couch, waking up every time the baby cried or the dog – an enormous Rottweiler who insisted on sharing the fold-out and probably weighed more than Gojyo – farted on his feet.

Gojyo hung his suit up to dry on one of the hangers in the small closet, hoping for the best, poured himself a glass of water from the sink in the tiny, dingy kitchenette, and crawled immediately under the slightly itchy, wine-coloured wool bedcovers, figuring sleep would never happen, but willing to give it a shot anyway – and then all of a sudden he was prying his eyelids apart and his cell phone was ringing.

“Sha...” He rasped, scratching a hand through the growth of stubble on his chin as he untangled his legs from the blankets. He’d probably had that dream where he was running from the convenience store, again.

“’m sorry Agent Sha,” it took Gojyo a few minutes to place the voice – Officer Goku Son, driver of the dog-scented patrol car, “but I’m outside your hotel. Sanzo sent me to get you. There’s...there’s been another.”

Gojyo heaved himself out of the bed, staggered to the closet. His suit was still damp, but it would have to do. At least from what he could see outside the room’s single, grimy window, the rain had stopped, though the clouds still sat over the city like weary soldiers, waiting to deploy.

“I’ll be right down,” he told Goku. “Go to the convenience store and get me a cuppa coffee, would ya?”

It was going to be a very rough morning.

***

By the time Gojyo got to the crime scene, it was pandemonium. There were already barricades set up around the carousel in the small park where the body had been discovered, but whoever had been in charge hadn’t put them back far enough. Reporters were already swamping the officers manning the barricade, and bystanders were trying to snap pictures with cell phones. Gojyo knew he was in more than a few of them as he flashed his badge to one of the officers and scanned the crowd for Sanzo’s blonde head.

“Over there,” Goku pointed, steering Gojyo with a hand on his shoulder. The grass was slick and the ground muddy from the rain, and the wind buffeted Gojyo seemingly from all sides as he walked towards the carousel in the center of the park, with wet tree leaves slapping him in the face.

“About time,” Sanzo grumbled as Gojyo staggered up to the ornate iron fence that surrounded the carousel. “We’re all standing around waiting for your ass because my Captain gets the bright fucking idea no one should touch the crime scene until the hotshot fed gets to take a look.” He paused, wrinkling up his nose. “You smell like a dead dog.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Gojyo grunted. He was well aware that the combination of butcher shop and wet dog did not make decent cologne. “So, let’s see it, then.”

“Body’s that way,” Sanzo replied, reaching out and snatching Gojyo’s coffee from his hand, ignoring all laws of ownership and Gojyo’s indignant squawk. As Gojyo stalked off towards the gate – plotting his bureaucratic revenge to be taken at a later date; maybe after he put about a hundred tacks on the bastard’s chair – he heard Sanzo barking at, he guessed, Goku, “Rookie! Get back to the barricade and tell those idiots to move the reporters back – way back! If I see even a glimpse of this shit on the eleven o’clock news I’m going to have your ass on a platter!”

The body was on the carousel, posed carefully in one of the ornate little carts behind the galloping horses with their golden harnesses and wide, slightly wild eyes. Gojyo had to admit she looked almost beautiful, in her ruffled gown, with her pale skin and perfectly-done makeup, her hair in tidy ringlets, a lace choker hiding the gash on her throat that would have been used to kill her and drain her blood. The only thing that spoiled the picture of porcelain doll elegance was the cataract whiteness of her eyes, and the very slight turn to her crimson-painted lips, like he wanted so desperately to scream but couldn’t.

Gojyo shuddered, swallowing hard, and turned around, walking back towards where Sanzo was standing with men in coroner’s white coveralls, an unlit cigarette tucked between his tight lips.

“I want pictures,” Gojyo told the lead coroner – a man with ruffled hair as black as a crow’s wing and a smile like butter wouldn’t melt in his damn mouth. “Lots of pictures, before you bag her.”

“Sir, yes sir,” the coroner purred, touching two fingers to his forehead in a salute just short of mocking before he went to work.

“Who found her?”

“Old guy walking his dog around six am,” Sanzo’s attention was fixed on the coroner and his assistant, now taking pictures of the body. He rolled the cigarette between his lips like that might be a substitute for actually smoking it. “he’s already checked out – he walks past here every morning, picks up a paper and a cup of coffee from the 7-11 on the corner, then walks back to his apartment on 23rd Avenue. Convenience store guy verified it.”

“Any cameras in the area?”

“If only my life was so easy,” Sanzo snorted dryly. “If we’re not too unlucky, going door to door might turn up something, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.” He paused, his lips turning up in a smirk, “though you can, if you want.”

“That’s real nice. I think I’ll pass, thanks.”

The crowd behind the barricade was getting bigger; more news vans had shown up, and the work-day crowd was coming out in full force, people stopping their commute to get an eyeful. Goku and some others were trying to herd them back, but they needed more hands. Gojyo put himself to work trying to get the details of the faces in the crowd – lots of killers liked to linger, watch the circus surrounding the discovery of their handiwork; and this guy, he was definitely a showman. You didn’t dress a girl up as pretty as he did and not take the time to enjoy the way people looked at her.

There was one guy, in particular, who caught Gojyo’s eye. He was standing right up at the edge of the barricade – tall, dark hair and wire-rim glasses in a green raincoat. He wasn’t a rubber-necker, not curious about what was happening at all; his face was absolutely _intense_ , to the point of being scary as he watched the coroners work.

“Hey,” Gojyo elbowed Sanzo, earning himself a snarl of disgust that he ignored, “that guy...”

Sanzo almost laughed; or it was probably his idea of a laugh, anyway. Gojyo was learning he was pretty much as humorous as a documentary on the Holocaust. “Him? Trust me, if I could get him on so much as a parking ticket, I’d have him down at Central already just to get him off my ass; but the bastard’s so clean he fucking _squeaks_ when he walks.”

“Yeah, but who _is_ he?”

“Hakkai Cho. Brother of the first victim. And no, you don’t want to talk to him. He’s got nothing to do with it – except that his sister was incredibly unlucky, and talking to him will only piss you off.”

But Gojyo couldn’t stop looking at the guy – those eyes of his, so bright but almost...hollow. Like someone had reached inside him and scooped out everything good, everything _human_...

A sudden crash of thunder had everyone looking skyward, just as the waiting clouds decided to open up again and start pissing down a torrent of rain, obscuring everything in a grey-white haze.

“Jesus!” Gojyo howled, hands instinctively coming up to cover his head, as if that would do him any good. “The scene – protect the scene – dammit, somebody get a fucking tarp!”

***

“I have to say, boys, that your Doll-maker is very good at what he does – a true craftsman.”

Gojyo shivered against the dry cold of the city morgue. For his next case, he was definitely going somewhere with a lot less rain. Maybe Arizona, or Texas. He’d left his jacket behind in Sanzo’s car, figuring he could share the wealth of wet dog smell if nothing else. The guy deserved it. But now he was regretting it; between being soaked to the skin, the cranked-high AC in the autopsy room, and the company of the city coroner – a creepy fucker by any standards, but then Gojyo didn’t have an experience with a coroner who wasn’t – Gojyo’s skin was crawling to the point that it felt like it was going to come off his bones.

“Spare us your admiration for your fellow psychopaths, Nii,” Sanzo stood on the other side of the room, well away from the body on the autopsy table, not out of any fear or disgust, but just because he couldn’t really be bothered with it, like most things. “Just tell us what you’ve found.”

“No appreciation for the finer things,” Nii winked lasciviously at Gojyo, making the back of his neck itch. “Well, if you insist. Erica Bowman, age twenty. Cause of death is the same as the others – single cut to the throat that severed the carotid artery. Body was drained of blood and at least partially – though imprecisely – embalmed. He’s perfecting his technique, however. This one is better than the last. Unfortunately, that doesn’t do much for my ability to tell what kind of chemicals she might have been introduced to before her death – though I would guess some. Nice ones.”

“Nice? You call this nice?” Gojyo demanded, gesturing to the body on the slab. The skin was faintly blue, now that all the makeup had been washed away, and the wound to her throat seemed huge, the bloodless colour of poorly-cooked pork.

“Believe me, Agent Sha – this beautiful little doll didn’t feel a thing – before or after she died. She has the same injection site wound to her neck as the others, and there’s no sign that she ever tried to defend herself.”

Nii pulled the sheet up over the body, the expression on his face almost...longing as it hid her from sight.

“Your boy is very good,” Nii repeated, turning towards the sink; the sudden rush of water hitting metal made Gojyo flinch, and he thought he heard Sanzo make an amused snort in response. “If you don’t catch him soon, he’s going to get even _better_.”

Those words were stuck in Gojyo’s head as he rode the elevator, about a half-hour later, back up to the bullpen with Sanzo. Seeing The Doll-maker’s work first hand was nothing like seeing it in photographs – it was almost unreal, to think a human being could do something like that – and Gojyo had seen a lot of seemingly impossible horrors in his line of work.

He was picturing Erica Bowman’s perfectly posed body, pale hands with painted nails folded neatly in her lap, when Goku practically pounced on them as they stepped out of the elevator.

“Hey – hey – Agent Sha. I’ve got Kanan Cho’ brother waiting for you in interview two, like you asked. He didn’t seem much like he wanted to talk, but he didn’t argue when I asked him to come.”

“Thanks,” Gojyo expected Sanzo to have some irritable comment to make about him not trusting the work he had done when he cleared the brother, but Sanzo just walked around them both, heading for his office with Nii’s autopsy report and the fresh crime scene photos tucked under his arm.

“Do you have any coffee?” Gojyo asked, as Goku pointed him in the direction of the interview room. “I want this guy to be comfortable. I’m not interrogating him.”

Yet, anyway.

With a cup of coffee in each hand, Gojyo let himself in to interview room two. It was one of the nicer rooms, with a conference table in the center, a collection of chairs, pictures on the wall – the room they used for victims and their families, not for real suspects.

Hakkai Cho was seated, with his hands folded primly on the polished tabletop, his gaze casual and wandering, studying the pictures on the wall, maybe. They locked directly on Gojyo when he entered the room, and his already impassive face went stony, his chin tipping down until Gojyo couldn’t even see his eyes for the reflection on the lenses of his glasses.

“Mister Cho,” Gojyo took a careful seat, passing him a cup of coffee and putting his elbows on the table, trying to appear casual, relaxed, “I’m Special Agent Sha with the FBI. Thank you for being willing to come and talk to me today.”

“I don’t have much choice, do I?” Hakkai’s voice was calm, but there was an undercurrent of anger to it. Gojyo could feel it buzzing in the air around him. “If I don’t cooperate, you’ll think I have something to hide. You’ll think I have something to do with what happened to Kanan and those other women.”

“Did you?” Gojyo cut straight to the chase; obviously, Hakkai wasn’t the kind of guy to hedge his bets – Gojyo wouldn’t get anything from him if he played conservatively.

Hakkai lifted his chin, and when their eyes met, Gojyo felt a chill go down his spine. “No. I didn’t. And I don’t like being accused of it.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Gojyo lifted his hands in a gesture of surrender, “but let’s be honest, from what detective Sanzo has told me, you’ve been a pretty big thorn in the side of this investigation.”

After they had brought him in to identify his sister’s body, he’d apparently sat outside, on the steps of the station, for forty-eight straight hours, until Sanzo had agreed to talk to him in person. Then, they’d caught him trying to pick the lock on Sanzo’s office, to get a look at the evidence files. When they’d tossed him out on his ass, he’d started showing up at crime scenes, and at Sanzo’s apartment, wanting to talk about the case, until Sanzo had threatened to arrest him for obstruction if he didn’t go away.

“I want to catch the man who killed my sister.”

It was a simple, direct statement, but it was laden with meaning. Hakkai didn’t just want to see the man who killed his sister brought to justice – he wanted to be face to face with him. Gojyo had seen family members of victims like that before; the ones who wanted to look the Devil in the eye, to put their hands around his throat...

“We’re working hard to do that, Mr. Cho.”

“Not hard enough. He’s killed three others since Kanan. He’s going to kill again before you catch him.”

“How do you know that?”

Hakkai huffed softly, turning his gaze back to the tabletop. “I know you have no suspects; I can tell just by looking at your face.”

The guy was genuinely starting to creep Gojyo out. Not just because he was cool as a damn cucumber, but because he was right. He’d probably be a brutal poker player, if he could read Gojyo so easily when it was Gojyo’s job to exude confidence enough to make people believe he was going to get the job done.

“I’m here to help identify a suspect; to help catch the man who killed your sister. If you know something that could help me do that –“

“I don’t,” Hakkai cut him off, pushing up from his seat and grabbing his raincoat off the back of his chair. “And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Stay out of my way, Agent Sha, and we won’t have a problem.”

***

“These murders require three things – time, space, and skill.”

“I’d rethink the ‘skill’ part,” Sanzo cut him off with a wave of his hand, “remember what Nii said – the guy’s embalming skills are for shit.”

They had moved the whiteboards from Sanzo’s office out into the bullpen, for lack of space, mostly, but also to get everyone’s brain working on the case at the same time. As far as Gojyo was concerned, the case suffered from a serious lack of eyes to look at it; particularly because Sanzo was obviously a stingy bastard and hated to share anything. Sanzo had huffed and puffed about it, dragging his feet and bitching about the opinions of idiots, but an order from his Captain had gotten him over the last of his stubbornness. Their work had attracted a large crowd of officers of all ranks, anyone who wasn’t busy answering phones had found a place to stand or perch around the board, ready to offer their opinions, while Gojyo stood ready to take notes on a tiny clear space on the board, sleeves rolled up and dry-erase marker in hand.

“Fine, have it your way,” he reached out to erase ‘skill’ from the board, when Goku called out and stopped him.

“Maybe he’s bad at embalming – but he’s good at other stuff. I mean – kidnapping and...and he knows how to give drugs.”

“Good point,” Gojyo flashed Goku a thumbs up, while Sanzo made a ‘tch’ noise and chewed on the filter of an unlit cigarette. “Now, the time part is obvious – there’s an average of eight days between the time the victims are last seen, and the time the bodies are found, but nothing consistent. Since he’s ‘shit’ – as you pointed out, Sanzo – at embalming, we’ve had a hard time nailing down time of death, but we’re reasonably sure he doesn’t keep them alive very long after they’re taken. He doesn’t torture or sexually assault them...”

“So why the hell _does_ he take them?” one of the officers at the back demanded.

“To kill them, jackass,” Sanzo huffed irritably.

A few people laughed. Gojyo raised a hand for silence.

“It’s all about the transformation – the act of making them into these...life-sized dolls. He goes to great lengths to make them as realistic – as lifelike – as possible, before he leaves them to be found.”

“It’s like...some kind of twisted art exhibition,” a detective named Mills observed, daring just enough to wander closer to where the crime scene photos were lined up, side by side in a row of four. “The way he sets them up. A diorama, almost. None of them were just left out on the street corner or anything. In the playground on a swing, on the bench under the streetlamp, under a tree with a book in her lap...and then this last one on the carousel.”

“Excellent,” Gojyo scribbled ‘posed’ on the board. “He wants to display them – they’re not toys because he doesn’t play with them, and not collectibles because he doesn’t keep them. He wants everyone to see what he’s able to do. Anyone else?”

“Where does he get the dresses?” Goku piped up. Someone laughed and elbowed him in the side, with a ‘Why, Goku, do you need one for the prom?’

“They have to be custom made,” Gojyo said, when the laughter had died down enough to speak. “They don’t have any tags.”

“But not a single dressmaker in the whole city will confess to having made them.”

That was true. Gojyo had an entire list that Sanzo had assembled – or more likely, some hapless patrolman had assembled on Sanzo’s behalf, since Gojyo couldn’t imagine Sanzo willingly doing something so tedious without committing a homicide of his own.

“He made them,” this from a female officer, standing towards the front, “otherwise they wouldn’t fit so well. He made them, just for these women. And he’s reusing fabric.” She came forward, pointing towards the first photograph, “There is fabric from this first dress re-used on all the other dresses. At least, that’s what it looks like to me.”

"We checked with seamstresses, tailors," Gojyo looked over at Sanzo for confirmation, "but did we go over craft supply stores? Fabric stores?"

"No," Sanzo huffed, "But there can't be that many."

"Well, I want a list within the next hour of local wholesalers and retailers that deal in fabric – I don't care _what_ kind of fabric, we're going to check them all.”

Of course when he said that, he’d agreed with Sanzo that there couldn’t be that many in the city – but a couple of hours later, with a list in hand of seventeen shops that sold fabric of some kind, and another five that Gojyo wanted to check out just in case, he was regretting the idea completely. Even more so because he had to listen to Sanzo bitching incessantly about it; though at least they were able to take Sanzo’s car and get away from the wet dog smell.

“I don’t sell much,” the man behind the counter smiled almost benevolently at Gojyo, like an adult might smile at a cute yet impossibly stupid child. He had something pressed between his lips that he was almost chewing on, not a toothpick, but something flat and rectangular. “I could perhaps import the kind of fabric in the quantities that you are talking about – but it would be expensive. Not for the casual buyer. Certainly it would not be my biggest seller. I would remember anyone who bought it.”

“What _is_ your biggest seller, if you don’t mind me asking.”

The store was a jumble of things – little golden Buddha statues, dolls carved out of ivory, elaborately painted vases and wind-up tinker-toys. There were shelves of packaged foods with incomprehensible labels and tinned drinks with flavours that ranged from the very ordinary – coffee with milk – to the bizarre – aloe white tea. It looked like a collection of all the sidewalk stores in every China Town Gojyo had ever visited, poured into a single store and garnished with a collection of foul-smelling but beautifully-coloured plants in brass pots.

“I do _special acquisitions_ ,” the shopkeeper hummed, thoughtfully stroking a piece from a mah-jong set on display on the countertop. “Like these – they are made of genuine bone.”

“What kind of bone?”

The guy’s lip turned up at the corner. The look gave Gojyo a chill – more than the combination of his soaked suit and the air conditioning could account for. “That’s a very good question, Agent Sha. Some kind of animal, I would suspect. I go to Hong Kong twice a year and purchase everything that is sold in this store _personally_ , the same way my father did. No one simply wanders into my shop off the street – they come here because they’re looking for something. Something only I can provide.”

“Okay,” Gojyo struggled to rub the goose flesh off the back of his neck with the palm of one hand before fumbling for a business card. “Well, if you think of something I might need to know about, this is how you can get a hold of me. Thanks for your time.”

It was actually a relief to get back outside into the rain, free of the choking closeness of the shop. Gojyo slid back into the car, ass squeaking on the leather upholstery and earning him a glare from Sanzo, consulting his list before directing Sanzo back into traffic.

They were on their seventh store, losing daylight and business hours, when it occurred to Gojyo that the camo-green Jeep parked obtrusively in a loading zone across the street was the same one he had seen getting honked at by a city bus outside the Fabric Land.

When he pointed it out to Sanzo, the only response he got was, “I told you not to fucking talk to him.”

Gojyo squinted through the rain-streaked windshield. It was hard to say for certain, but maybe...

“Jesus, are you serious?”

“He’s going to be a thorn in _your_ ass, now. Unless you want me to arrest him on some _federal_ charge. That’s actually a favour I’d be willing to do for you.”

Gojyo kicked open the car door and plunged forward into the rain, "Listen, lemme go over there..."

"I'm going back to the station; I'm not waiting around for you to make friends with the guy."

"Fine, I'll grab a cab, just..."

Sanzo revved the engine and Gojyo quickly slammed the door to avoid losing any limbs or being dragged along the pavement. Then he jogged across the street, dodging on-coming traffic, and knocked on the Jeep's driver-side window.

"Is there something I can help you with, Agent Sha?" Hakkai asked, rolling the window down about halfway. Rain splashed in on the worn leather interior and spotted the front of his shirt.

"Yeah, actually – can I get a lift? My ride just threw me out." When Hakkai looked hesitant, he flashed his best smile. “C’mon man, don’t make me pull my badge on you, it’s cold out here.”

He watched Hakkai chew his lip, considering, before he finally relented, “Yes, alright, get in.”

Gojyo scrambled around to the passenger’s side door before Hakkai could change his mind. Hakkai crammed a handful of papers into the glove compartment so that Gojyo would have a place to sit. Inside, the Jeep was warm and sticky with condensation, and decorated with signs of Hakkai’s prolonged occupation – empty coffee cups and takeout containers in a trash bag, a blanket and pillow folded on the back seat.

“Do you live in here?”

Hakkai kept his attention focused solely on the road as he steered the Jeep out into traffic. “I’m afraid I’ve come across some hard times in recent weeks.”

“Because of your sister?”

“Yes.”

And really, what other answer was there? Nothing could shatter a person’s life like the loss of a family member – Gojyo knew that as well as anyone.

“That’s why you’re following us around, huh – you want to know what we’re up to.”

“If I’m meant to trust you to find the man who killed my sister, I want to make sure you’re making the best use of your time, yes.”

And, okay, Gojyo could get behind that, too. He’d never had the chance to ensure something like that for himself – it had all fallen to other people, as these things do when you’re just a child – and luckily it had all turned out alright in the end.

“Why were you going around to fabric stores?” Hakkai asked. He was trying very hard to sound casual, but Gojyo didn’t know, exactly, how to give a casual answer to the question. He didn’t want Hakkai to know so much, especially since it was obvious that the guy was determined to find his sister’s killer for himself – but if he gave Hakkai something, maybe Hakkai would give him something in return, in terms of leads.

“We’re trying to find out where the killer might have bought the fabric that was used to make the dresses the victims were posed in. They were handmade. Means the stuff used to make them had to come from somewhere, right?”

Hakkai stared intensely at the red light they were stopped at, like he could force it to change with the power of his mind. If the light had been able to see the look on his face, it probably would have worked.

“Kanan liked to make her own clothes. She learned how in high school. Home Economics. Beyond that, I’m afraid the class didn’t teach her much. She could burn water, if she tried.”

He almost, almost smiled at that. But it was still too much, too soon, obviously, because he made a visible effort not to, and his eyes became glassy – what Gojyo could see of them – with unshed tears.

“Did she have a particular place she liked to shop for her supplies?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know,” Hakkai’s gaze flickered to Gojyo, and it was a little bit desperate now, “if I did know, would that help?”

“Maybe. Hard to say. It’s just one of the leads we’re following up on.”

Hakkai was chewing his lip again. “To tell the truth, I don’t know how often she did it, anymore. She was so busy with school I doubt she had much time to herself for such things.”

“Well, that’s alright. It’s good to know. Maybe we can use that to connect the killer to one of the other victims. Every little bit helps. Catching a killer like this one is kinda like putting together a jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the lid to cheat with – so any time you get a glimpse of what you think it’s supposed to look like, that’s a good thing.”

“Have you caught many of these...people?” Hakkai ground the last word between his teeth; like he wasn’t really sure he wanted to use it.

“Yeah – a few.”

“I’ve been reading the statistics – about how often these sorts of things happen, how many cases are investigated every year, it’s...daunting.”

Gojyo rolled down the window of the Jeep to let some cooler air into the stifling interior. Droplets of rain spattered his face. “You don’t need to tell me, man.”

Gojyo’s phone rang, and he rolled up on one hip against the door to pull it from his pocket. “Sha.”

“You need to get over to Juniper and 51st Street by the Coleridge and Hughes book store,” Sanzo snarled into his ear – there was an almost deafening amount of noise on the other end of the line, then the slam of a car door drowned it all out, “Patrol called in a woman who escaped being pulled into a black panelled van.”

“Shit, do you think it’s our guy?”

“I don’t care if it’s fucking Santa Claus,” Sanzo was nearly drowned out by the wail of a siren, “I’m hauling his ass in.”

That was definitely something Gojyo could get behind.

“Change of plans,” he told Hakkai, “I need you to drop me off at Juniper and 51st, by the bookstore. Do you know where that is?”

“Of course – is it – “

"I don't know, just..."

Hakkai wheeled the Jeep around in the middle of traffic, earning them a chorus of horns blaring and angry shouts while Gojyo clung to the dash for dear life.

"Jesus!"

"Sorry," Hakkai offered, insincerely, "but surely capturing a murderer is more important than obeying traffic laws."

"Not if you get us killed, it's not!"

Hakkai didn't reply, just floored it, the Jeep accelerating up the street like they had a demon on their ass – anyone who didn't like it just had to get out of their way.

It was a fucking madhouse when they reached the bookstore parking lot – a whole bunch of witnesses milling around, an ambulance, and a pair of patrol cops desperately trying to control the scene. Gojyo barely had a foot out of the Jeep when one of the patrol men started talking hurriedly into his radio.

“Agent Sha!” The patrolman waved him over, “someone’s called in the van, three blocks over on Young Street – parked outside a tenement.”

Gojyo wanted to cram a dirty sock down the kid’s throat and just watch him choke, because the minute the words escaped his mouth, Hakkai had the jeep wheeled around and wet tires squealing up the street.

“Shit – Shit!” There was no way he was going to be able to catch up with the Jeep just running on foot, but his legs were moving him before he could think about it, feet pounding the pavement, knees stinging with the impact, lungs burning and rain slapping his face. When he heard the screams, he knew he was headed in the right direction.

He didn’t even see the crowd around the van – he was laser-focused on Hakkai, pulling a guy out of the driver’s seat by his throat.

He pulled his gun, and the crowd parted like a red sea of terror, screaming and ducking behind cars.

“Hakkai – put him down!”

The guy was scrawny, vicious-looking in the way a starved dog was vicious, but he was turning a sick shade of blue in the face, fingers scrabbling at Hakkai’s wrists.

“Hakkai!”

Hakkai released his iron grip and the guy crumbled to the wet pavement, coughing and clutching his throat. Hakkai turned away from him and walked towards Gojyo without so much as a backwards glance, like the guy was a piece of gum he had spit onto the sidewalk.

“It’s not him,” Hakkai didn’t even flinch at the sight of Gojyo’s gun – his eyes were cold, almost dead behind his glasses, like the eyes of a doll. Gojyo’s heart was going so fast, adrenaline pumping through his blood in a hot rush, that instinct screamed at him to pull the trigger and save his own life.

"It's not him," Hakkai repeated – his voice as empty and cold as his eyes. "A killer wouldn't wet his pants."

***

"What the fuck are you _thinking_ \-- taking the brother of a victim to a live crime scene - are you insane? You're supposed to come here and help me solve this shit, not fuck it up more!"

"Hey – don't act like you've got the right to dress me down, sweetheart – “

"Just because you've got a fancy acronym to hide behind –“

"Enough!" The Captain’s voice literally boomed through the bullpen like the voice of God – silencing everyone, even the patrolmen drinking coffee in the hallway. Sanzo all but held his breath, looking at Gojyo with a positively murderous glint in his eye as his commanding officer stalked over to them in her blindingly-polished heels and sleek pantsuit. "If you boys want to to whip them out and compare, then let’s see it – but I guarantee you, mine is bigger than both of yours.”

It was all Gojyo could do not to picture that in his head. Stomach-churning, definitely. Sanzo took a step back out of Gojyo’s personal space and rolled his eyes.

“Now,” The Captain jabbed each of them in the chest with a perfectly manicured fingernail, “if you boys are quite done – play nice and get your asses back to work to catch this bastard.”

“Whatever,” Sanzo huffed, and the Captain jabbed at him again until he added, “sir.”

“Good. Excellent. And I don’t want to hear from you again until it’s done.”

The conversation in the room flared back up as the Captain returned to her office and shut the door. Sanzo was still glaring hot daggers at him, but since that was pretty much his default expression, Gojyo could deal with it.

“Not that I have to justify myself to anyone,” Sanzo said at last, “I do think he has the right to confront the person who took his sister’s life – but I don’t think he should be allowed to fuck things up for everyone else in the process.”

“Fine. I’m not going to argue with that. He was right about it not being our guy though.”

Sanzo snorted, “Obviously. A black van in a crowded parking lot in the middle of the day? That’s too fucking amateur.”

Gojyo sighed, raking his hands through his hair until it stood up wild in all directions. He’d liked it so much better when it was longer, except for the tangles he had to brush out. “We need to catch this guy – and soon. This case of mistaken identity is all over the news, and it’s only going to piss him off.”

Sanzo nodded, but he looked like he hated doing it. “He’s proud of his work – won’t want anyone else taking credit for it, and it’ll be hours before we get the press to lay off claiming we caught him.”

“So what can we do about it?”

“You’re supposed to be the guy with all the answers.”

Gojyo ground his teeth together, lungs abruptly aching for a cigarette. Sometimes he wished that his job was less dumb luck and more genuine skills. He could only look at the patterns for so long before they started running together into one enormous blur.

“Get someone to brew some coffee, get all the evidence together. I’m gonna run a quick errand and then we’re going on this all night.”

***

“So, they impounded your car.”

Hakkai looked up from where he had spent the last hour on a cold oak bench outside the bullpen. No one had handcuffed him at least, but he looked like he might have been more comfortable if they had.

“And it turns out,” Gojyo continued, “that even with a fancy federal badge with my name on it, I can’t get them to open up the impound lot after business hours.”

“It’s quite alright,” Hakkai stood, smoothing his hands down the front of his slacks. It seemed very controlled, but it was really a nervous, fidgety movement – Hakkai didn’t know what to do with his hands. “I don’t suppose it matters now, since I’m going to have a place to stay anyhow.”

“Actually, they’re not arresting you.” Hakkai looked startled. Gojyo continued on. “Sure, you almost choked the guy to death, but he _did_ try and pull a woman into his van – and he had burglary tools, duct tape, and an unregistered handgun.”

“He’s not the man who killed my sister, though.”

If Gojyo had been a more suspicious person, he would have wondered exactly what it was that made Hakkai so sure of that. Fortunately for Hakkai, Gojyo didn’t do much suspicion anymore – he was too well-trained.

“No, he’s not. We know that. Now c’mon.”

Gojyo turned towards the elevator and Hakkai followed him, trailing at a cautious distance. “Where are you taking me?”

“Goku – Officer Son – is going to escort you to my hotel room.”

Hakkai started on something that sounded like _excuse me, but..._ and Gojyo just talked around him.

“Since I won’t be using it – at least for the next twenty-four hours. And you’re not going to have a car to sleep in for at least that long.”

“I wouldn’t want to cause you any inconvenience.”

“Right,” Gojyo pushed open the door and stepped out into the rain. He was getting so used to being soaked to the damn skin that he didn’t even bother to rush his way down the stairs. Hakkai pulled the hood up on his raincoat without breaking stride. “I think that ship’s already sailed.”

They stood at the bottom of the steps, waiting, as Goku pulled the cruiser up to the curb. Gojyo opened the door for Hakkai and he slid in, wrinkling his nose up at what, for Gojyo, was now a familiar smell ground into the upholstery.

“I know, I know,” he gave Hakkai his most apologetic smile, “K9 unit – what can you do? The Federal budget doesn’t extend to rental cars anymore.”

He passed Hakkai the key to his room, and was actually rewarded with a wry smirk, “Apparently it doesn’t extend to decent hotel rooms either.”

That smirk was a bit of a shock. It made Hakkai look – not handsome, exactly, because he already was that – but more...alive. “Tell me about it.”

***

Kanan Cho had been a beautiful girl. She didn’t really look a thing like her brother, though. Except for the eyes – they had the same, intense green eyes – and if hers had a lot more warmth to them; it was probably just a matter of circumstance. After she’d died, they had gone sort of creamy and grey, though her killer had obviously tried to recreate their colour with the fabric he’d chosen for her dress...

Gojyo shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose to ward off the on-coming headache, and reached for another cigarette. His pack was almost empty; Sanzo had sent Goku down to the nearest convenience store for a couple of packs for each of them nearly a half-hour ago and the kid still wasn’t back.

“Any magical insights?” Sanzo grumbled from the other side of the room. He was busy pouring over the list of the few suspects they _did_ have – and getting more and more frustrated by the minute if the vein in his forehead was anything to go by. “Or are you just going to stare at that one picture for the rest of the night?”

Gojyo was honestly too tired to be pissed off about Sanzo’s attitude, “I don’t know – I just...I’ve got this feeling like...if we’re going to catch this guy, it’s going to be because of her. She was his first victim – there’s always something special about the first victim, something unique. It’s when everything is new for the killer – when everything’s a high point. But it’s also the most disappointing – because all that shit they’ve been coping with, everything they think is going to be solved by putting a knife to a pretty girl’s throat – doesn’t go away when the moment’s over. There’s no relief.”

Sanzo waved his hand dismissively, “We should be focusing on the case with the freshest leads.”

“But this one...”

“Fine,” Sanzo dropped another stack of files onto the desk with a thump, kicking up a stream of stale air and scattering ashes from the tray into Gojyo’s face and on the front of his shirt, “we’ll focus on that one if you can convince me that your sudden obsession with her has nothing to do with the fact that you’re all buddy-buddy with her brother now.”

“Buddy-buddy? I barely know the guy.”

“Which is why you’re putting him up at your hotel?”

Gojyo sighed. Friggin’ Goku and his obvious hero-worship of Sanzo. He should have just called Hakkai a cab to take him from the station.

“Look, I feel bad for the guy, alright? His sister is dead and I put him in a position this afternoon where he could have done something incredibly stupid...”

Sanzo turned away from the desk with a snort of disgust, “And that wouldn’t have been his choice at all.”

“It _is_ his choice but...that’s not how this is supposed to work.”

Sanzo grunted, “If the world worked the way it was _supposed_ to, we’d both be out of a job. Hell, we wouldn’t even be here.”

That was doubly true for Gojyo. Triply even, but if he spent too much time thinking about it, he was just going to get pissed off. And anyway, members of the law enforcement profession really typically came in three varieties – the do-gooders, out to make a difference; the lifers, following in the footsteps of brothers, fathers, uncles or grandfathers; and the ex-victims, justifying a kind of blanket vengeance with a badge and a gun. With Sanzo’s sunny attitude, Gojyo had him more or less pegged as the latter variety – but hey, no judgement. They had something in common, after all.

“What’s this?” Gojyo nudged one of the crime scene photographs under Sanzo’s nose, “This bracelet here?”

Little yellow-white rectangular beads. They reminded him of something, but he couldn’t think what.

“Just a bracelet,” Sanzo shoved the photo back, “it belonged to her.”

“Did it?” Gojyo thumbed through the file, “She’s not wearing it in these other photos.”

“This one,” Sanzo shoved his hands into the pile, pulled out a photo of Kanan and her brother that looked like it was taken in high school. Kanan had her arm around her brother’s shoulders, and the same bracelet could be seen catching the sun around her wrist. “Stop fixating.”

“I still think it’s her,” there was always something special about the first one; always.

***

Around six am, after a short, unhelpful nap in the precinct break room, Goku drove Gojyo back to his hotel to get a few hours of real sleep; or maybe just a shower and a cup of coffee. Gojyo wasn’t feeling particularly picky.

It wasn’t until he walked into the lobby that he remembered he had given Hakkai his only room key and was forced to have the groggy-looking guy behind the front desk buzz the room to wake Hakkai up for him.

Surprisingly, Hakkai didn’t look all that bothered when he came down to the lobby to “escort” Gojyo up to the room. It was ridiculous that a place that barely had a lock on the front door insisted on such stringent security. The room looked cleaner than Gojyo remembered. It smelled better too – like lemon furniture polish and hot coffee.

“Did you clean in here?” Gojyo asked, peeling off his – frankly ruined – suit jacket and hanging it in the closet. Hakkai had made himself at home by the looks of it; jacket hanging in the closet along with a heavy sweater, shoes arranged neatly on the mat by the door. He had even made the bed – it barely looked slept in. “You know they have a housekeeping service for that.”

“They weren’t doing a very good job,” Hakkai said, which was true; but still. “If you would like to go and have a shower, I was going to make some breakfast.”

“You bought food too?”

“It really seemed like the least I could do, considering you’re allowing me to stay here for free.”

Gojyo pried off his shoes, peeled off his wet socks, and finally decided just to strip right down to his undershirt and shorts. Even those were wet and sticking uncomfortably to his skin. Hakkai looked mournful as he scattered his discarded clothing over every available surface in the hopes that it might dry before he had to put them on again, but he didn’t make any actual argument; instead installing himself in the small kitchenette, putting a tarnished kettle on the two-burner stove.

“You know, that would be great,” Gojyo said at last, “really great, actually. I can’t remember if I’ve actually had a meal since...well, since before I flew out here.”

And cup noodles and a bag of chips didn’t really count as a meal anyway.

He stood under the hot spray of the showerhead until he was almost asleep on his feet and could barely physically stand anymore. It was literally the best sensation in the world next to sex and his first cigarette after waking up in the morning. When he headed back out into the main room, with a towel wrapped around his waist because he hadn’t had the good sense to bring his travel bag into the bathroom with him, Hakkai was sitting at the kitchenette table with a cup of coffee, a bowl of oatmeal and the case file spread out in front of him.

“Hey – hey man, you shouldn’t...” Gojyo tried to fumble the glassy, gory pictures back into the file with one hand and hold on to his towel with the other. He didn’t effectively manage to do either. “You shouldn’t look at those.”

“It’s alright,” Hakkai protested, his voice and movements almost mechanical as he moved his mug out of the way so that Gojyo wouldn’t accidentally tip it over. “They’re just pictures.”

“Pictures of dead people. Of your sister. No one needs to see that.”

“You’ve seen it.”

Gojyo finally managed to get the pictures stuffed more or less back into the file and out of sight and dragged it across the table away from Hakkai – but had to leave it sitting on the table for lack of anywhere else to really put it as he went hunting for a pair of sweats in his travel bag. The only ones he’d brought with him were the ratty greys from his Quantico days, so worn that the elastic waistband was escaping through the battered fabric.

“Well, it’s kind of my job.”

Hakkai curled his hands around his coffee mug, bowed himself over it like he needed the heat, even though the room was sticky-warm with the steam from Gojyo’s shower. “You must have seen many horrible things.”

Understatement. “Yeah.”

“People are capable of terrible things.”

Gojyo poured himself a cup of coffee, dished up a bowl of oatmeal and sat down before he answered. “Yeah, they are.”

“I don’t understand how you can do it – every day of your life seeing these things.”

Gojyo shrugged, “I hate to say it, but you just...get used to it. Things stop surprising you, or scaring you. They still disgust you, you still have nightmares about them, but you manage.”

“I have this recurring nightmare about Kanan,” Hakkai’s voice was suddenly more conversational, but strained around the edges. He sipped at his coffee, like that might make their whole conversation seem closer to normal. “Not just since her murder, but for years, about when we were in high school – which is ridiculous, really, because we hardly spoke to one another in high school.”

“Really? Why’s that?”

“We moved in different social circles. I was hopelessly unpopular and a loner, while Kanan had a large circle of friends, and a boyfriend besides. To make things worse, her boyfriend and I never got along, though he seemed to adore her. He showered her with gifts – his father was very wealthy and incredibly well-travelled...but he was so possessive of her. And critical. He was always trying to make her in to something she wasn’t. At least that was the way I saw it. Obviously she didn’t agree.”

“She probably said that you were possessive too,” Gojyo couldn’t help the smirk that crept onto his face, “right? After all – she was yours first.”

Hakkai chuckled sadly, “I’m afraid so. They used to fight about the strangest things. He wanted her to curl her hair, which she hated –wear certain clothes. He loved to give her jewellery that he had made himself.” Hakkai paused, shaking his head almost sadly, “she was particularly fond of a certain bracelet...so much so that I broke it, purposely, when I was angry with her. She didn’t speak to me for weeks afterward. She was most upset when our parents moved us away just before senior year, but I can hardly say I felt the same. In my nightmares I am looking for her in the halls of our high school, and I know she is in the building somewhere, but I can’t find her for the life of me, and no one will help me look although I beg and beg them; and eventually I just become so...enraged, that I...I start killing them. First with the pocket knife my father gave me, and then with my bare hands, tearing them apart like I’m some kind of...animal or monster.”

“That’s...um...” Gojyo stirred his oatmeal, suddenly not quite as hungry as he had been, “pretty intense. How does it end?”

Hakkai’s lips made a shape that was roughly the approximation of a smile. “It doesn’t, actually. I keep ripping my classmates to shreds until I wake up. I never understood that kind of rage - even though it was my own dream – until the day that Detective Sanzo told me she was dead. All I could think was that Kanan had been so happy to come back here – to see the friends she had left behind.”

It seemed useless to say he understood, so Gojyo just nodded sympathetically and stirred his oatmeal. When he took the first bite, it tasted weirdly sweet, like Hakkai had put some sugar or syrup into the mix. Normally Gojyo just liked his plain, but he would have to make the best of it – after all, couldn’t complain too loudly when he hadn’t been the one to make it in the first place.

Hakkai was quiet until Gojyo had finished his breakfast; he was scraping the last spoonful of oatmeal from his bowl when Hakkai said, “Sanzo never allowed me to see the pictures.”

“Of course not,” Gojyo drained the last mouthful of his coffee, “you should remember her the way she was when she was alive...not as a body in a crime-scene photo.”

“I would do anything to avenge the murder of my sister. If Sanzo had simply understood that, he would have realized that letting me see the photos would be a great help to the investigation.”

“What do you...” Gojyo shifted, leaning back in his chair, and suddenly the whole world took a hard tilt, like a car going around a curve at high speeds. It wasn’t necessarily the worst head rush he had ever experienced, but it hit him hard, out of nowhere, and left him gripping the edge of the table, white-knuckled and trying to blink the world back into focus.

“Hakkai?”

“I’m sorry,” Hakkai stood up, like he hadn’t even noticed anything was wrong, even though Gojyo could literally feel the blood sloshing around in his head, missing critical brain cells while Hakkai carefully gathered up their dishes. “But, a brother’s eyes can see more than yours, Agent Sha. No one knew Kanan as well as I did. And now, you know me almost as well as she did. You see – I, too, am capable of terrible things.”

The last thing Gojyo saw before he blacked out was Hakkai soft, almost apologetic smile.

***

Kanan was on the swing, rocking back and forth, in her beautiful, lacy, green dress. It was raining enough to make Gojyo’s eyes blur, but the water didn’t touch her. There was a plastic curler caught up in her hair, and as she swung, the delicate rectangular beads of her bracelet tapped against the chain of the swing.

“What kind of bone is it?” She asked, holding out her hand to Gojyo – her fingers were bloodless white, her fingernails painted to match the dress. “Do you know?”

Gojyo reached out, and the bracelet fell into his palm. He could see now why the beads had looked so familiar – they were tiny, perfect mah-jong pieces, painted by hand.

***

It felt like his head was splitting, like waking up from the worst hangover of his entire life – and he’d had more than a few that could have qualified – when he opened his eyes the room was sideways, and it was all he could do to swallow down the rise of his stomach until he realized that he was lying on the floor.

Getting back up onto his feet felt like climbing Mount Everest; he couldn’t even properly feel his feet – but with the table to lean against and his body more or less vertical, he thought maybe he could hold himself together.

The clock on the bedside table was a blurry red mess – seven...something. He hadn’t been out long. Where the hell was his cell phone?

For a few agonizing minutes, he was sure Hakkai had taken it – but he found it in the pocket of his suit jacket – though his Browning was gone, the holster hanging empty. He had his back-up revolver, which he normally wore in an ankle holster – he had tossed it into his suitcase and it was still lying there, under a discarded and soggy shirt; but he knew he was in a shit-ton of trouble.

He thought he had Sanzo’s phone number programmed into his cell, but the way his vision was going – sliding and dividing, going white around the edges, he couldn’t find it; but he managed to hit redial and got a familiar voice.

“Officer Son.”

“Goku? Goku, goddamn it – you need to get here now. Now.” His voice felt like it was drooling out of his mouth – he wasn’t even sure if he was making any sense. He tried to hold the phone with one hand and drag a shirt out of his bag with the other.

“Agent Sha? Are you okay? You sound kinda funny.”

“Just come pick me up. Pick. Me. Up. Soon.”

“Well okay – I thought you were s’posed t’be getting some sleep though.”

“Now, Goku. Bring Sanzo with you.”

“Okay, okay – I’ll be there right away.”

Gojyo managed to get his shirt on, tucked his revolver into the back of his sweats, and shoved his feet into his soggy shoes. Getting himself down the stairs almost earned him a broken neck, and definitely a more than a few bruises on his ass, but he managed to get himself out onto the rain-drenched sidewalk just as Goku’s squad car pulled up out front.

“This had better be fucking good,” Sanzo snarled at him as Gojyo slid into the back seat, slick with rain and dog hair.

“The imports shop – the one in China town,” Gojyo directed Goku, ignoring Sanzo and the furious vein in his temple, “we need to get there fast.”

Goku’s face lit up as he reached for the switch to the siren, “I can do fast.”

“What the hell are we doing?” Sanzo bellowed over the wail of the siren, “and you know you look fucking stoned, right?”

“He drugged me.”

“Who?”

Gojyo wound his fingers in the wire mesh that separated the front seat from the back, forcing back his gag reflex as Goku went too fast around a tight corner. Sanzo shouted something obscene and smacked him with a stack of papers. “Hakkai. He got a look at the files while I was in the shower – I think he might have been planning it the whole damn time. He knows who the killer is.”

Sanzo looked like he was start spitting acid, “Well I hope you do too – otherwise we’re having the goddamn noisiest joyride in history.”

Goku killed the siren about five blocks out, and they rolled up to the store front in silence. The shops on either side and across the street were opening up for the day, but the windows of the store Gojyo was interested in – the one with the awning above the doorway that read simply “Imports” – were dark. Gojyo clawed open the door, once Goku released the safety lock, and stumbled out, bracing himself on the car and trying to shake the lingering fog from his brain.

“Shit,” he muttered, hand finding the gun at the small of his back. Maybe Hakkai wasn’t even there. He didn’t have a car; how long could it take him to get across town – a half hour? Would he even come to the store of all places? It made sense to Gojyo – the pieces slotting in to place. The workshop would be in the store; it was the only place where the Doll-maker would have enough space and privacy to do what he needed to do.

That didn’t mean he would be there, right at that moment, though.

“Take the front,” Gojyo instructed as Sanzo got out of the car, “I’m going ‘round back. Get the kid to call for backup.”

“Don’t get yourself killed,” Sanzo huffed, “I refuse to deal with the paperwork.”

The narrow alleyway between the imports store and the Dim Sum restaurant next door smelled sour – like rotten vegetables and rat piss. A dirty cat yowled at Gojyo, leaping off a trash bin and darting away as he stumbled towards the back door.

Someone had already broken the lock, and Gojyo was pretty sure he didn’t even have to guess who. It was dark inside, damp and smelled faintly of something chemical, of wet cardboard and rotten fruit. Gojyo couldn’t find the light switch, which was just typical.

Instead of going down the hallway – which he was sure would lead him into the store proper, where Sanzo was probably already busy busting his way through shelves of expensive imported knick-knacks – Gojyo pulled open the first door he came to and very nearly ended up in a broom closet. The door across the hall yielded better results – a stairwell leading down – no railing, damp walls, and a dim light glowing at the bottom underneath yet another door. Gojyo braced one hand on the wall, got a grip on his gun, and headed down. The air pressure seemed to change as he descended, and the cold made his skin crawl. The faintly sweet, rotten chemical smell got stronger, stomach turning, clinging in the back of Gojyo’s throat. At the bottom of the stairs, the door was cracked open, and through it, Gojyo saw the glint of light on stainless steel, and someone’s leg against the concrete floor.

He nudged the door open cautiously, eyes scanning the room. There were shelves lined with jars of vile-coloured chemicals, a stainless steel table and trays full of sharp instruments – rib crackers and scalpels, needles and little packets full of suture material – and a mannequin enveloped in a half-finished dress.

Hakkai was on the floor in a still-spreading pool of blood, tangled limbs and soaked clothing. Gojyo couldn’t even tell if he was breathing.

“Shit – shit. Hakkai?” Gojyo pushed open the door, barely scanning the corners of the room for threats, and dropped to his knees on the cement, grabbing Hakkai’s shoulder and pushing him over. He was pale, and Gojyo couldn’t see the whole of the wound between the blood and the torn fabric, but he was pretty sure that he could feel the soft rubber of intestines sliding against his palms. “Hakkai, I swear to god if you die I’m going to kick your ass.”

Hakkai’s eyes were a sliver of green – one impossibly swollen, more injured than Gojyo wanted to think about; his mouth gaped and the blood on his lips bubbled, and Gojyo had just enough time to reach for his cell phone before something hit him in the back of the head.

He jerked forward, feeling like his skull was about to come off his neck, trying to catch himself, keep his chin from planting into Hakkai’s shoulder, but his hands slipped in Hakkai’s blood and he fell hard, just managing to turn to avoid falling directly on top of Hakkai, but he had no idea where his gun was – or even, for a terrifying moment – what he might want with it.

He rolled on to his back, wheezing in pain. Someone was standing over him – just a shadow in the shape of death – Gojyo brought his hand up, not even thinking he could protect himself from what was coming, but definitely not wanting to just go out, doing nothing because that wasn’t his style – and then the gun went off. It was so loud, it sounded like it was _inside_ his head. He waited for the spike of pain, the flash of light; but all he heard was the long, familiar buzz of tinnitus and the rush of his heart beat.

Hakkai was propped up on one elbow, aiming the gun that Gojyo had dropped, and the Doll-maker’s blood was spreading around both of their feet where the body had fallen, a clean hole through the skull, right between the eyes.

The last thing Gojyo heard before he allowed himself to succumb to the throbbing pain in his own head was Sanzo’s voice saying, “You asshole – I warned you about the goddamn paperwork.”

***

“You know...drugging a Federal officer – that’s probably a pretty serious offence. I haven’t had a chance to look into all the details, but yeah.”

Hakkai looked very small, and frail in his hospital bed. The Doll-maker – and of course he had been just a man like all the others Gojyo had caught, not a monster or a mutant. Chin Yisou, aged twenty-nine, without any family left to even write on his tombstone – had tried to gut him, one smooth gash across the belly. Gojyo had the distinct impression that even the doctors still didn’t really know how he had lived through it. They kept expecting him to go toxic, or just keel over dead; but here he was, three and a half weeks later, still holding himself together, even if he looked sometimes like he’d mostly given up. The damage to his one eye was permanent, though incidental. They’d fitted him with a prosthetic that looked practically real.

Gojyo had mostly recovered from his blow to the head within a couple of days. There was still some concern about the damage to his left ear, which had kept him from being able to fly home just yet. It was just as well, anyway; he had more than enough paperwork and other shit to deal with in the wake of the messy end to his case. At least he’d been able to find a nicer place to live, with Goku’s help, renting a one-bedroom near the station, supplementing what he knew the Bureau would willingly spend to house him with his own money. He felt bad going back home when Hakkai was in the hospital anyway – considering the guy had saved his life.

“There’s like...six million forms I have to fill out when I discharge my service weapon. Even more if someone discharges it who’s not me. That’s a bureaucratic nightmare.”

“My apologies,” Hakkai said at last, finally turning his gaze away from where he was studying the pigeons outside the hospital window.

“Hey – don’t get me wrong. You saved my life. I just wish my life didn’t involve so much paperwork. And I’ve got to do Sanzo’s shit besides – that guy is a real tight-ass.”

Hakkai went quiet again, picking at the sheets.

“You know, they’re thinking of letting you out, soon.”

“That’s wonderful,” Hakkai said, in a tone of voice that said he thought it was anything but.

“Any thoughts about where you’re going to go after this?”

“No. I barely entertained the idea I would get this far.”

Gojyo breathed out hard, raking a hand through his hair. “Dammit, I need a smoke.”

That seemed to get some kind of reaction out of Hakkai, at least. “This is a hospital.”

“Yeah, well you’re not going to tell on me, are you?” With some difficulty, he was able to crack the window next to Hakkai’s bed about half an inch, and hunkered down with a cigarette , doing his best to blow most of the smoke out the window. “Lemme know if that hot nurse comes ‘round.”

“Agent Sha...”

Gojyo just grinned, “Never mind. Can I tell you a story?”

“Hakkai started to look disinterested again. He _was_ keeping a lookout, though – every so often, his eyes would turn towards the door, warily.

Gojyo took a deep, hard drag on his cigarette and blew out a long trail of smoke before he got started. It was the sort of story you needed a good nicotine hit for, and probably something else, besides.

“When I was three years old, my mom killed herself.”

Hakkai’s head snapped around so fast that Gojyo thought it was going to come off his neck. He was used to that kind of reaction and pushed ahead before he could say anything in response.

“It was a pretty bad situation. See my old man went to prison, just before I was born – he gambled, got in with the wrong people, started stealing to cover his debts – and when he was in there...well he must have really been shit at keeping out of trouble, because he got into a fight, ended up dead.”

“That’s terrible.”

Gojyo shrugged. “Yeah, well – a lot of things are. Anyway – my mom didn’t have any family, I guess. Neither did the old man, so I ended up in foster care, in a home where I got kicked around a lot – and not by the other kids. So I ran away. They found me, put me in another home and I ran away from that one too. I kept running away until they stopped coming after me. Ended up on the street, hanging with the older guy named Banri. He was an asshole, but he treated me okay, so long as I didn’t let him push me around.”

The sudden clack of familiar high heels startled Gojyo into silence, and he used the bottom of his boot to snuff out the remains of his cigarette, quickly palming the butt and stuffing it into his pocket, waving away the smoke. But the nurse didn’t come in, so eventually he continued.

“We did all the usual dumb shit that kids do when they’ve gotta figure out how to survive on their own – petty stuff like panhandling, picking pockets, shoplifting, and that was fine. Then one night, we’re just walking down the street past this convenience store and Banri says to me, ‘Hey Gojyo – go in there and clean out the register. I’ll wait here and look out for you.’ I’m thinking bullshit, right? Banri’s a big talker, likes to joke around, so I say ‘what do I threaten the clerk with – my shoe?’ and he pulls out this nine-mil and hands it to me.”

Gojyo could still remember the weight of the gun, the way the metal of the grip had been warm from the skin at the small of Banri’s back.

“And I mean – I didn’t _want_ to do it, but Banri was older than me, bigger. He looked after me, and he just kept pushing at me and pushing at me until I just...gave in. I put the gun in my pocket and went into the store, and Banri stood there outside the door so no one could go in or out. It was just me and clerk – this old hippie guy with a big, long braid – in the store, but I was scared shitless, ready to piss myself. I walked up to the counter and I held out the gun – I don’t even remember what I said to him, but I remember the way he smiled at me after I said it, like he totally understood just what I was going through.”

Hakkai was watching now, intense, to the point that Gojyo couldn’t keep eye contact with him and had to turn away towards the window, watching the pigeons picking at the roof instead.

“So I’m holding the gun on him – my hand is totally shaking; I could have shot him entirely by accident – and he wasn’t even afraid! He just looked me square in the eye and said, ‘C’mon now, son – I think you should give me that’ like it’s no big deal at all, ‘give me the gun’ he says, ‘and you can go right out the back door, and I promise I won’t tell a soul you were here.’ And I’m just about to lose it – thinking how I’m going to have to fight Banri, if I can’t get him the money he wants; which I could do, I could definitely do, but the last time he knocked one of my teeth out and my eye swelled shut for a week ‘til I thought I was going to be blind – and he must know just what I’m thinking because he looks at me and says ‘It’ll be okay, I promise. Your life doesn’t have to be something you regret.’”

An alarm sounded in the hallway, a doctor was paged. Gojyo pressed his lips together and waited until it stopped.

“I dropped the gun right into his hand and ran for it. Never looked back, never saw Banri again. It wasn’t some miracle cure for all the shit that was wrong with me, but I started actually _trying_ , you know? I would have liked to thank that old guy for helping me – but the stupid thing is, he got shot in a robbery about six months later; probably trying to talk a gun out of the guy’s hands the whole time. That’s irony for you – like a brick to the head.”

Gojyo grabbed his jacket off the back of the chair – he’d finally invested in rain gear, sick of getting soaked to the skin every damn day. According to Goku, even the winters were rainy, until about January sometime, when everything froze like a Popsicle. Gojyo wasn’t looking forward to it.

“Listen, I gotta go. Just think about it, would you? I’m sure you sister would want something good for you.”

He had his hand on the doorknob when Hakkai said, “I’m sorry Agent Sha.”

Gojyo raised a hand, waving, without looking over his shoulder, “and don’t worry about the ‘Agent Sha’ stuff anymore. It’s just Gojyo, for guys who save my life.”

***

“Yeah – I’d like an order of egg foo young, and an order of the beef chow fun with extra bean sprouts.”

The guy taking his order on the other end of the line said something that sounded like _lucky cucumber_ which Gojyo was sure he hadn’t heard right, and was trying to puzzle out when the doorbell rang. He fought with the lock – which was damn sticky and drove him crazy – with the phone balanced on his shoulder, distractedly agreeing to a dozen things before stopping abruptly, mid-sentence as he opened the door and found Hakkai standing on his doorstep.

He was wearing his same raincoat – the only thing that had survived his encounter with the Doll-maker – over hospital scrubs, and he smiled contritely as he said, “I’m sorry Gojyo – I hope it’s not going to be an inconvenience...”

Before Gojyo could even begin to process an answer, his phone beeped with a call on the other line.

“Sorry,” he muttered, though he wasn’t sure if he was apologising to Hakkai – though he stepped back to let him into the apartment – or the poor guy on the other end in the Chinese restaurant as he put him on hold. “Sha.”

“Hey – it’s Goku. I mean, Officer Son.”

“Yeah, hey kid. What’s up?”

There was a lot of noise in the background – it sounded like a car radio, and a familiar, bitchy voice...well, _bitching_. “Sanzo wants me to tell you that he had Hakkai released from the hospital into your custody because – no, Sanzo, I’m not saying _that_ to an FBI guy – ow, ow! Okay! – because idiots belong in pairs.”

Gojyo snorted, “That’s great. Awesome. You tell Sanzo thanks very much for his consideration and ask him if he’s going to pay for the extra Chinese I gotta order...”

“You’re ordering Chinese?” Goku practically squealed in delight, “Awesome – we’re coming over to drop off some more paper work so order some for us, okay?”

“Wait – who’s ‘we’? Wait, you dumb monkey –“ but Goku had already hung up. Gojyo quickly switched lines, added a plate of ginger beef, four spring rolls, and chicken fried rice to his order before snapping the phone closed.

Hakkai was standing in the middle of his sparse living room – the place had come furnished, but only rudimentarily so – looking damp and awkward.

“Well,” Gojyo spread his arms, encompassing the whole of his Spartan living arrangement, “better get un-packed, we’re having company for dinner. Hope you like Chinese.”

Hakkai put his suitcase down next to the couch and shrugged off his raincoat, “I’ll get the plates.”

“And no drugging me this time!” Gojyo called after him as he headed for the kitchen, “I mean it!”

He wished the fact that Hakkai only laughed in response was less creepy and more reassuring. He’d probably get used to it.

-End-


End file.
